What Do I Do With All This Data? - Understanding the Click

No matter what you are trying to accomplish with your email marketing, what is the one common objective of all email marketing campaigns? From my point of view, it will always be getting your subscriber to take action, which in email marketing terms is a click. The exciting thing about email marketing is the ability it gives you to interact with your subscribers one-to-one. Understanding what motivates them and adjusting your marketing efforts to fit each individual subscriber making the subscriber feel like they are not just a faceless number to your company is key. This personalized approach would be much more difficult if it was not for “clicks.” Let’s review the basics of what a click is, and how to review click activity.

What is a clickthrough?
First of all, you have to have a link in your email if you are going to get a click. If you are sending emails without a single link, you are failing. Links within emails can be created to drive the subscriber to purchase a product, to read an article, to watch a video, etc… When the subscriber clicks a link, it provides you with a great deal of data about your subscribers as well as your emails effectiveness. All email service providers will report how many clicks each one of the links you created in the email received and you should also be able to see unique vs. total clicks for each link. This is commonly referred to as a clickthrough.

Just like I spoke about with the open rate, the number of clickthroughs is also subject to the same inaccuracies. However, if someone clicked a link, then you know there was interest and you know what they were interested in from the link they clicked. If you merge this data with your web analytics, then you will be able to tell even more from just a single click.

Since the objective of the emails is always going to be to get the subscriber to click on a link, all work put into creating a successful email is (or should be) focused on this objective. Therefore, the clickthrough rate can be affected by almost every aspect of your email. Determining why your clickthrough rate was higher the last time you send an email can be a difficult task. So, let’s first understand some of the basics data you should be looking at.

Click Tracking 101
First you should be looking at the percent of subscribers who clickthrough, or the clickthrough rate. This rate can be determined in two different ways. Some will base the number on the number of emails sent and others will base this rate on the number of emails opened. I only use this percent as a way to determine the performance of a single email compared to others like it. Just pick your methodology and stick with it.

Next, make sure you are looking at the link that got the most clicks. Whatever it was, find out why and then test your thoughts. Did placement have something to do with it? Was it the offer? Was it the content or maybe the creative? Whatever you determine is the reason for its popularity, test it. Also, be looking for those links that did not get any attention at all. If you realize over time that no one is interested that specific information, save yourself sometime and quit providing it. Your subscribers will lead you on what they like and what they do not. It is important to listen to them.

A Quick, But Necessary Tangent...
Back to the interaction with the subscriber for a second. Your email is not meant to sell the subscriber anything. It is meant to get them curious enough to click. The only decision the subscriber should be making in the email is to click or not. Similarly, if you are sending a newsletter with several articles, the only way you are going to know which articles hit home with which subscribers is to get the subscriber to click a link to view the rest of the article. Do not put the entire article in the email. Here are a few other things to think about when using links.

Placement of the link: Where in the copy is the link most effective? Should you have a link posted several times in different areas of the same email?

How the link displays: Do you create a button that is linked, link a group of words like “click here” or do you type out the entire link itself?

Where the link takes the subscriber: Are you sending the subscriber right to the place they need to purchase or just dumping them on your home page to find their own way? Are you creating landing pages for the links? Do your landing pages have navigation that will take them back to your home page or are they held in a microsite?

Find Trends
When it comes to clicks, look for trends with individual subscribers. Create a profile for each level of engagement with your company and, as a subscriber meets that level, move them and message to them differently. A subscriber who is engaged and clicking on your emails every time deserves a completely different status then one who seldom clicks any of your emails. For example, if a subscriber is not a client yet, but clicked on some information about a specific product, note that in their profile. If there is a sale on that product, that subscriber should know about it.

We have only scratched the surface on this subject in my mind. There are so many more ways tracking and analyzing clicks can improve your email marketing success. Look for more post from me with Advanced, real world examples of clickthrough analysis driving improvements in email campaigns.

What Do I Do With All This Email Data? - Open Rates Understood

Ok, you built a strong list of subscribers and you have begun to send your emails... Now what? Are your campaigns successful? Are your subscribers interested in your emails? What do you do with all this data from your email sends? How does it help you improve your campaigns?

Close to the end of April I created a poll on twtpoll asking what area of email marketing is the most difficult to find information about. It was not a big surprise to me, or to @jacaldwell (another fellow email marketing guru that RT'ed my post) that the clear winner was information about how to analyze your data. A close second was strategies for testing, which I have written about as one of the first posts I wrote for this blog.

I believe there are some basics that need to be understood as a good foundation for all to build from when it comes to analyzing the data you obtain through email marketing. Understanding and acting on the data to improve your results is one of the major keys to long term success with email marketing. For the next few weeks, I will be posting my thoughts on the basic data points and what to look for in each area when you are analyzing your results. First up...

Understanding Open Rates

Open rates are not used to understand just the effectiveness of your subject line, they can help you to discover many things about your email's overall effectiveness. Once you have gotten a subscriber to opt-in to your emails, the next hurdle is getting them to open the emails. Before you can act on the open rate to improve your emails, you need to know what exactly is the open rate and how is it determined.

The open rate is defined as the number of times a specific email has been opened or viewed by the subscriber. The stat is found by adding the number of times the images from the specific email have been downloaded by the a specific subscriber id that is unique to each subscriber. Every time an HTML email is opened, your email browser with "call' for those images and provide the server with the information needed to record an "opened email."

Here is where things start to get confusing...
The open is nowhere near a perfect number. Emails can be opened by the same person several times. Emails can be forwarded and opened by friends which will "look" just like the original subscriber. Emails can be read completely and deleted without ever being noted as opened since the subscriber decided not to download the pictures. Images might automatically get downloaded when the subscriber views the email in the preview panel in an email browser. When is comes to open rates, the waters can quickly become muddy.


Unique vs. Total Opens
The unique open rate is the number of subscribers that opened your email. The total open rate is the number of times your email was opened regardless of subscriber. For example, If I opened an email 5 times over 2 days time it would record 1 unique open and 5 total opens. Simple enough... right?

The difference between these two numbers for each email you send is important to understand. There is a trend among email marketers to start looking only at the unique open rate, believing that the total open rate is too clouded with junk and uncertainty that it will not bring value to review. However, there is a lot that can be found by looking at the total open rate numbers.

It is true that if one subscriber's data shows the email was opened by this person 10 times it could just be that the person opened the email 10 times. But what if that person is actually forwarding that email to 9 friends? Wouldn't you want to know that? What if that happens with that subscriber often? Is that subscriber an advocate for your company? Would you want to message to that subscriber differently? Well of course you would! Dig into the data and find the trends. What if one subscribers total opens were 50 or more for one email? What was it about that email that caught the subscribers interest? You can learn a lot from this number.

It not a bad thing that your campaign became viral...
One of the best things to happen to an email campaign is for it to go viral or spread quickly to friends not currently on your list. Knowing the difference between the total and unique opens is one way to know that your message is hitting home and beginning to spread. The larger the difference the larger the potential that your email was forwarded and read by more then just your subscribers.

Quick question... When your email is forwarded to a friend, does the friend have a way to subscribe within the email if they like the email and want to receive more emails in the future? If not, you are missing out... Capture the new subscribers when they are interested!

What is a Good Open Rate?
That is all you really wanted to know from this post, right? Is your open rate good or is it horrible? That is an all too common question without a good answer. I can spend time telling you the average open rate based on your industry, but yours could be completely different. Open rates are going to fluctuate and will be different for everyone. You should be looking to improve your open rates overall, but more importantly it is the fluctuations that your attention should be on. I believe the open rate is not something that you will base the success or failure of your campaign. While getting your email opened by your subscribers is the first challenge, it does not do you any good if your subscribers don't take any action. To that end, next up will be understanding clicks...

Protecting Your Investment by Maintianing Your Email List

Building your email marketing subscriber base is only the first challenge. Maintaining a clean, responsive, opt-in list of subscribers is the next hurdle. In my last post, I spoke about how to effectively grow your list. Now you need to understand how to make sure your list continues to remain effective and producing results.

As I mentioned in my last post, each year you can expect your list to erode up to 30% based on your subscribers changing their email address. This holds true regardless of whether your focus is on B2B or B2C. Bounce management will help you drastically reduce that rate.

If you are having challenges with your subscribers losing interest and effectively causing your list to become stale, check out how to turn that around by reading more about active vs. inactive subscribers.

BOUNCE MANAGEMENT
Most, if not all email marketing platforms provide tracking on the deliverability of your email sends. The report should give you a breakdown of which emails were delivered and which emails did not. In the simplest form, there are two reasons why an email was not delivered to your subscriber.

Soft Bounces - One general category for a bounced email is the soft bounce. This means that the email address is valid, however there was something that caused your email to not get through to the subscribers inbox. Examples of this type of bounce are the mailbox was full, the server was down, your email was blocked by a SPAM filter, and so on.

When you receive a soft bounce message several times consecutively (each platform has a different rule for this. The range can be anywhere from 3 – 5 times) on a subscribers email address, the platform you are using will most likely flag the email as undeliverable and it will be blocked from receiving additional emails.

You can stay on top of this erosion by reviewing this list every 3 to 6 months. Place a call to the subscriber notifying them of the issue and asking them, first of all if they are still interested in receiving your emails and secondly if they have added your marketing email address to their “Safe Senders” list. If you are using an email marketing platform that provides you with a detailed definition of the reason for the soft bounce, then you are able to more easily determine what needs to be done to solve the issue of your emails bouncing and if it is even worth placing that call.

For example, if the response you receive from a subscriber multiple times is “mailbox full” then it will not help to add your email address to their Safe Senders list. The message would be more along the lines of determining if the subscriber would like to use a different email address to receive your emails.

Hard Bounces - The other category is the basic hard bounce which means the email address is not valid. The exception to this definition is when an email browser or SPAM filter returns a “fake” hard bounce. Again, most email marketing platforms will either segment your hard bounced emails into a list, or just flag the emails as such and block them from being sent additional emails.

Staying on top of this list is a similar process, but can be done much more frequently and the conversation is always going to be the same. “We noticed that your email address has gone bad and we wanted to make sure you could still benefit from receiving our emails. Do you have a new emails address you would like us to send them to?” Update the record with the correct email address and get them back on the list.

ACTIVE vs. INACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS
The basic objective with every email marketing campaign whether it is for brand awareness or to drive sales is to always drive the subscriber to take some sort of action. This is the only way you are going to be able to measure success or failure of your campaigns… right? I would disagree. Subscribers will not always unsubscribe from your list when they are not interested in your emails anymore. They will just stop reading them. To determine how effect your email marketing efforts are over the long run, you need to factor in how “inactive” your subscribers have become.

Define what active subscriber means to you. For example, I will define active subscribers as subscribers who will at least open your emails and click on a link once every 3 months. Depending on the frequency of your messaging and the content you are sending, this definition could be greatly altered. So, find the right set of rules to determine what an active subscriber is for your purpose.

Once you have defined what an active subscriber is for you, everyone else is now considered inactive. For one reason or another, they have stopped interacting with your company. You have lost your relevancy with them, you have annoyed them with too many messages, you have done something, or not enough to keep them interacting with you.

So, what do you do with the email subscribers who have become inactive? At this point you are wasting your time blasting away at them hoping for some activity. Inactive subscribers need to be segmented and messaged to differently with a campaign focused on reengaging with them. Pulling the inactive subscriber out of your main campaigns on a regular basis will also give you much cleaner reporting.

You can learn just as much from your inactive subscribers as you could from your active subscribers. One way to accomplish this is to let the subscriber rest for a few cycles and then send them a survey. Your message needs to be focused on the importance of your relationship with the subscriber. Let them know that you miss them and offer them some incentive to complete the survey. The survey needs to give them the opportunity to tell you why they are not engaging and comment on what they would like to see or what would get them interested again. Give them options to change their preferences including the ability to receive less email from you… even the option to opt-out all together.

Just like staying on top of the oil changes and scheduled maintenance on your vehicle, setting rules around how to handle bounce management and inactive subscribers up front (and of course, following those rules) will help to protect your investment. It also does not hurt to get a nice coat of wax on it once and a while… so, let me know how I can help you add that extra shine to your campaigns with future posts.

Common - Creative... Building your Lists More Effectively

One of the biggest assets for the email marketer is their opt-in list of email addresses. Every year up to 30% of the emails on your list will become invalid emails. Building your list and staying on top of the list erosion can be a struggle. There are very common sense things that need to be in place to capture email address. But, many of these tactics will just keep you ahead of the erosion curve.

Some of the most common and maybe not so common ways companies are building their email lists are…

• Website sign-up form… Hint, make sure it is on every page of your site.
• Adding a forward to a friend link in all your email messages
• Adding a link to sign-up in transactional email messages.
• Require email address for downloading white papers from your site with the option to opt-in
• POS registration options
• Add a message to visit the site and opt-in on the in-store receipts
• Opt-in during the online shopping process
• Customer facing employees need to be asking for the clients emails
• Run contests or sweepstakes
• Don’t forget to promote the website sign-up on all direct mail pieces
• Tradeshow fishbowl with opt-in message
• Bag stuffers promoting the sign-up

If you really want to GROW your list, then you need to start thinking outside of the box and use some creativity. Below are a few examples of the creative ways some companies are using to build their email lists that I felt deserved more than a bullet.

Bounced Email List Append: One way to stay on top of your emails gone bad is to take all those hard bounced emails and see if you can find out their new email address. The company I work for has been doing this successfully for years. Every six months or so, pull the list of your hard bounced emails and append new emails to them. Then send a re-engagement message to them asking them if they would still like to be part of the list. We have seen an average of 30 – 35% of the hard bounce list opting back into the campaign.

Leverage Another Companies Email List: Now I am not suggesting that you send a message to another companies list. However, think about advertising your company in an email message sent from another company. Make sure you choose the company that is messaging to your target audience, of course. This can be accomplished many ways. There could be the opportunity to sponsor the message, buy advertising space, write an article that is featured in the message, and many others. This will drive additional traffic back to your site and hopefully drive more opt-ins.

SMS Technology: Providing someone the opportunity to join your email marketing list by texting their email address to a short code is another fantastic way to build your list. An example of this is to have a sign at the checkout line at a retail store that says “TEXT JOIN {youremail} to {short code} now to begin receiving special offers via email. You can even send them an immediate coupon back to use right there at the register! Now someone can join while they wait in line. They do not have to remember to visit your site when they get home or have time. You do not have to rely on the checkout person to remember to ask for the email address.

Not all of these ideas are going to be appropriate for your business. Some are going to be more effective than others depending on your industry.

Finally, I wanted to give you some advice when thinking about capturing email addresses on your website. Ask for only the information you REALLY need when someone is first signing up for your emails. Asking for a bunch of information when registering will be too overwhelming for some people. Reduce the number of fields you are requiring and you will increase the number of people opting in.

Bonus Tip: Interesting Way to Test Subject Lines!

I am sure you all are aware that I am always on the lookout for new and innovative ideas on improving email marketing results. While on Twitter yesterday, I noticed a post by @mmallin which stated, "Twitter's probably a great place to test different subject lines for email marketing campaigns." At the time, I thought not a bad idea and I retweeted the message. Then a few questions came back to me about how this would be accomplished. So, I feel like this deserves more attention then 140 characters to share my thoughts.

One of the common uses for Twitter is to send links to your Followers to read an article, join a webinar, etc.. The challenge is always to provide a good call to action message that will get the Followers interested in clicking on the link you provided. This is the same challenge all email marketers face when writing a subject line. Twitter is a great place to hone your skills in this area.

Tracking the effectiveness of these messages is the next obstacle. If you have insight into the web analytics for the site you are sending them to, or you have visibility into the registration activity for a webinar you have invited Followers to, then it makes things a bit easier... but not perfect. For example, send a tweet with one message. Wait a day. Check the site traffic. Send another tweet with a completely different message but same objective. Which one performed better for you.

Now let's take it up a notch... By using your email marketing platform, send a message to just yourself with different tracking links for the same destination. Copy those links into different tweets with different messages you would like to test. The effectiveness of those clicks can be seen in real time within your email marketing platform. Whichever performs better, use it in the "real" message to your subscribers... Make sense? Great... Now take advatage of this idea to polish up those subject lines!

Thanks to Michael Mallin @mmallin for this idea. If you use this idea with success, I want to hear about it. If you have questions or other great ideas, share them with everyone by commenting on this post.

Tomorrows Post: Effective ways to build your lists without purchasing emails

Email + Direct Mail Marketing Strategy = FAIL!

One of the biggest mistakes for companies just getting started or, for that matter any company spending time with email marketing, is treating their email marketing like direct mail marketing. I also believe it is a big reason why those same companies get turned off of email marketing. The stats for email marketing do not reflect better results because so many companies are doing it wrong. It does not take much to make a huge difference in your results. Here are a few steps you can take to improve your results immediately.

1. NEVER Send Email to Purchased or Rented Lists: Big mistake… I know there are good list companies out there and sometimes it works for some companies. However, this is the fastest way to a bad reputation a company can take. If you are a direct marketer, the first thing you are looking for is the right list to purchase for your message. If you have the same mentality with email marketing, you are going to fail. Email marketing is all about the subscriber. Instead of finding the right list for your message, find the right message for your list.

There are so many ways to build your list (in fact that will be my next post) there is no reason for you to purchase a list for email marketing. The risk of having a high rate of SPAM is too great to go down this path. If the recipient of your message is not opted-in to receive the message, then they should not be getting an email. This is best practices 101…

2. Maintain a Clean List: If you have been emailing at all, you probably know people tend to use the “Report Spam” buttons more than clicking on the link you provide (especially true in the B2C world). If you are using an email marketing service worth anything, the recipient who clicks this button is automatically removed from your list. This helps you with keeping your list clean, but your reputation still took a small hit. Get enough of those “hits,” and you start to build a bad reputation.

Why not take care of the issue before it causes a problem for your reputation? Review your list every month and remove recipients who have been inactive over the last six months. Now, I know this is not what a direct marketer would do, but this is not direct marketing. You certainly can create a new segment with this group of recipients and market to them differently. There are several strategies for getting inactive recipients reengaged which can be discussed in another post. However, the take away from this is… big lists don’t mean big results. The focus needs to be on clean data with active recipients even if that means sending to a much smaller list. If they are not engaging in your campaigns, why would you waist time with them?

3. Personalize: This does not just mean sending the exact same email to your entire list with the only difference in the email being the fact that you added the recipient’s first name in the beginning of the email. What I am referring to is a more focused, personalized approach to your messaging. Data is the key. Learn as much as you can about your recipients and use that to create a message that speaks directly to that specific person’s interests.

A basic example of this approach is to create an email with dynamic content that is delivered differently based on the gender of the recipient. Instead of a shoe store sending a generic offer email out that offers 30% off of all shoes, the store could send an email out with the same offer, but with a different image for a male as opposed to a female. Take that even further… if the recipient has shopped there before and the store knows what type of shoe they bought, the image changes to that type of shoe and the message changes to “30% off of your favorite shoes!”

The more personal your message can be the powerful the message to the customer. The more the customer is going to feel like your company knows/understands them. This will affect your results immediately for the positive. Communicate directly… Interact, relate with your customer on a personal level. Don’t just blast them with another generic email that might or might not be relevant to them.

As a very general rule, if you have been in the direct marketing world for a long time, email marketing is a different beast. If you want to be successful with your email marketing campaigns, use an old trick I learned from George Costansa… Do the exact opposite of what you would do normally. Success will follow.

As always, your comments are welcome and I hope this post gave you some good ideas on how to polish up your email campaigns.

I cannot say it enough... Always, always be in test mode.

I am often asked questions like… “What is the best day to send my emails?” “What is the best time?” “What should my subject line say?” I could go on and on with the questions, but my answer to most all of these is going to be the same… “Let’s find out.” Statistics are great to look at and use as a starting point, but all lists are not created equal and therefore do not respond the same. The only way you are going to know if what you are doing is working the best is to test another idea. Find out what works and then try to improve it.

No matter how much you think you know about your customer base, chances are sometimes they will surprise you… hence the reason for testing. Testing is one of the foundations of email marketing. I believe that if you are going to do email marketing well, you need to always be in a test mode. Don't become complacent with your email marketing. Just because something worked, does not mean that it cannot be improved.

It is your job as a marketer to learn as much as you can about your customers and use that data to become more effective. When it comes to email marketing, the old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is not true. Always try and break the mold. There is always room for improvement.

Testing starts with a plan. Not just an idea of what you are going to test today, but a long term strategy for testing. What are your goals when it comes to testing? What do you hope to achieve? You must have a good understanding of the theory behind each of your testing ideas. Know what action you are going to take based on the results of your tests. What are you going to do next to improve your results?

Now, what are you going to test and more importantly, how are you going to perform your tests?

The most common form of testing is the A/B Split method. Most email marketers have used some form of this method. An example of this method is with a subject line test. Send 10% of your list one subject line. Send another subject line to another 10%. Wait a day and send the remaining 80% of your list the subject line that performed the best. Simple. It is easy to administer and it is very easy to determine the results. It is an effective form of testing in most areas.

Another and less common form of testing is multivariable testing. As its name suggests, this method allows you to test many changes simultaneously. However, the more variables you are testing, the larger your list will need to be in order to create a statistically significant result. Once the results are in, you can determine which change had the largest effect on the conversion rate of the email. This is a more complex testing method but it does lead to faster learning about your lists and more creative ideas.

When it comes to what to test, there are so many things that can be tested. Subject lines, layout, segmentation, and landing pages just to name a few. I am interested to know what everyone is testing. What have been the most successful for you and what other methods of testing have you deployed…?

I hope this, at the very least, got you thinking. If testing is not a part of your email marketing effort right now, then your emails are not getting the polish they need to shine.

Testing... Ideas for and Statistics around testing coming soon...

I am a firm believer that you should always be in test mode. Always working on improving your email marketing campaings. I will be posting my thoughts and experiences around testing as well as some industry statistics that should give you some insight on how to test better.

This post is scheduled for March 5th. In the meantime, here is what I would like to hear from you. Tell me what you are struggling with when it comes to testing your email campaigns. Do you not know what to test? Tell me what statistics would help you. What process do you have in place for testing your campaigns?

The more information I get from you guys, the more focused and personal I can make this post. A more polished post means a more brilliant shine for your email campaigns. Generic is out. Relevant and personal is in.

Just getting started... Advice welcome!

I have been answering clients email questions now for almost 4 years. Although I was working at a full service interactive company, my continued focus had always been email marketing which kept me very settlered.


Since my recent move to a company called Digital Evolution Group, I have gotten much more involved in Social Media. DEG as a company is a full service e-consultancy and has a strong understanding in social media.


To that end, in order to fully service my clients, I need to have a better grasp of all the things we as a company can provide. I believe there is no better way to understand it than to totally emerse myself into social medias. I have started a facebook page, updated my Linkedin page, gotten a Twitter account and I am now branching out to start blogging.


I would like to use this blog as a way to present my experiences and opinions when it comes to email marketing in order to provide real world examples of successful campigns that can be tweaked to work for your company. I would also like to make this an interactive blog where your comments and questions can be reposted and answered. I would also invited others to join in and provide their advice as well. I will be figuring this thing out as I go and welcome any advice.

Tell me what you want to hear. Tell me what you are struggling with. Help me understand what you want to hear about most. I recently talked with someone about internal email newsletter statistics and how difficult it has been to find benchmarks for her to know that she is doing well. Her entire focus is the communication to the staff. I did not have any good stats for her right off the top of my head, but it has caused me to begin researching data for this. So, if anyone has some good stats on your basic tracking for internal communication emails, it would be very helpful to share this.

My goal is to post at least every other week on Thursday. I will ready through comments made from each post and if there are questions that warrent a more indepth post, I will write on that question. If not, I will post relevent stories from the week that will hopefully shed some insight on how to polish your ideas.